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ON THE FOREGOING DIVINE POEMS.
When we for age could neither read nor write,
The subject made us able to indite:
The soul with nobler resolutions decked,
The body stooping, does herself erect:
No mortal parts are requisite to raise
Her that unbodied can her Maker praise.
The seas are quiet when the winds give o'er:
So calm are we when passions are no more;
For then we know how vain it was to boast
Of fleeting things, so certain to be lost.
Clouds of affection from our younger eyes passion.
Conceal that emptiness which age descries.
The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed,
Lets in new light, through chinks that time has made:
Stronger by weakness, wiser men become,
As they draw near to their eternal home.
Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view
That stand upon the threshold of the new.
It would be a poor victory where age was the sole conqueror. But I doubt
if age ever gains the victory alone. Let Waller, however, have this
praise: his song soars with his subject. It is a true praise. There are
men who write well until they try the noble, and then they fare like the
falling star, which, when sought where it fell, is, according to an old
fancy, discovered a poor jelly.
Sir Thomas Brown, a physician, whose prose writings are as peculiar as
they are valuable, was of the same age as Waller. He partakes to a
considerable degree of the mysticism which was so much followed in his
day, only in his case it influences his literature most--his mode of
utterance more than his mode of thought. His True Christian Morals is a
very valuable book, notwithstanding the obscurity that sometimes arises
in that, as in all his writings, from his fondness for Latin words. The
following fine hymn occurs in his Religio Medici, in which he gives an
account of his opinions. I am not aware of anything else that he has
published in verse, though he must probably have written more to be able
to write this so well. It occurs in the midst of prose, as the prayer he
says every night before he yields to the death of sleep. I follow it with
the succeeding sentence of the prose.
The night is come. Like to the day,
Depart not thou, great God, away.
Let not my sins, black as the night,
Eclipse the lustre of thy light.
Keep still in my horizon, for to me
The sun makes not the day but thee.
Thou whose nature cannot sleep,
On my temples sentry keep;
Guard me 'gainst those watchful foes
Whose eyes are open while mine close.
Let no dreams my head infest
But such as Jacob's temples blest.
While I do rest, my soul advance;
Make my sleep a holy trance,
That I may, my rest being wroughtt
Awake into some holy thought,
And with as active vigour run
My course as doth the nimble sun.
Sleep is a death: O make me try
By sleeping what it is to die,
And as gently lay my head
On my grave, as now my bed.
Howe'er I rest, great God, let me
Awake again at least with thee.
And thus assured, behold I lie
Securely, or to wake or die.
These are my drowsy days: in vain
I do now wake to sleep again:
O come that hour when I shall never
Sleep again, but wake for ever.
"This is the dormitive I take to bedward. I need no other laudanum than
this to make me sleep; after which I close mine eyes in security, content
to take my leave of the sun, and sleep unto the resurrection."
Jeremy Taylor, born in 1613, was the most poetic of English
prose-writers: if he had written verse equal to his prose, he would have
had a lofty place amongst poets as well as amongst preachers. Taking the
opposite side from Milton, than whom he was five years younger, he was,
like him, conscientious and consistent, suffering while Milton's cause
prospered, and advanced to one of the bishoprics hated of Milton's soul
when the scales of England's politics turned in the other direction. Such
men, however, are divided only by their intellects. When men say, "I must
or I must not, for it is right or it is not right," then are they in
reality so bound together, even should they not acknowledge it
themselves, that no opposing opinions, no conflicting theories concerning
what is or is not right, can really part them. It was not wonderful that
a mind like that of Jeremy Taylor, best fitted for worshipping the beauty
of holiness, should mourn over the disrupted order of his church, or that
a mind like Milton's, best fitted for the law of life, should demand that
every part of that order which had ceased to vibrate responsive to every
throb of the eternal heart of truth, should fall into the ruin which its
death had preceded. The church was hardly dealt with, but the rulers of
the church have to bear the blame.
Here are those I judge the best of the bishop's Festival Hymns, printed
as part of his Golden Grove, or Gide to Devotion. In the first there
is a little confusion of imagery; and in others of them will be found a
little obscurity. They bear marks of the careless impatience of rhythm
and rhyme of one who though ever bursting into a natural trill of song,
sometimes with more rhymes apparently than he intended, would yet rather
let his thoughts pour themselves out in that unmeasured chant, that
"poetry in solution," which is the natural speech of the prophet-orator.
He is like a full river that must flow, which rejoices in a flood, and
rebels against the constraint of mole or conduit. He exults in utterance
itself, caring little for the mode, which, however, the law of his
indwelling melody guides though never compels. Charmingly diffuse in his
prose, his verse ever sounds as if it would overflow the banks of its
self-imposed restraints.
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